In the shadowy woods of rural Nova Scotia, where thick brush and steep banks swallow secrets whole, the disappearance of two young siblings continues to grip the nation like a bad dream that won’t end. Lilly Sullivan, 6, and her brother Jack, 4, vanished without a trace from their family home in Lansdowne Station on May 2, 2025 – a quiet morning that exploded into a parent’s worst nightmare. Now, seven months later, fresh scrutiny on polygraph results from the children’s mother, Malehya Brooks-Murray, and stepfather, Daniel Martell, is stirring up a storm of doubts, wild theories, and nagging questions that refuse to fade.

What was supposed to be a routine lie detector check has morphed into a lightning rod for suspicion. Initial tests cleared the couple, but whispers of inconsistencies, family feuds, and overlooked clues are fueling online sleuths and armchair detectives. Did the machines capture cold, hard truth? Or are they masking a darker family drama? As the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) dig deeper into this baffling case, the public is left wondering: Where are Lilly and Jack? And who, if anyone, knows more than they’re letting on?

The morning of May 2 started like any other in the modest trailer on Gairloch Road, a secluded spot about 88 miles northeast of Halifax. Brooks-Murray, 28, and Martell, her partner of less than a year, were wrangling their 1-year-old daughter when they realized the older kids were gone. Brooks-Murray called 911 at 10:01 a.m., her voice cracking with panic as she described how Lilly and Jack had slipped out unnoticed – possibly through a sliding back door while the adults tended to the baby. By 10:27 a.m., RCMP officers were on the scene, kicking off what would become one of the largest missing persons hunts in Nova Scotia history.

The siblings weren’t strangers to instability. Born to Brooks-Murray and biological father Cody Sullivan, who split years ago amid messy custody spats, Lilly and Jack bounced between homes. Sullivan, a truck driver from Middle Musquodoboit, had shared parenting time until Brooks-Murray relocated with the kids to the Lansdowne property last fall. There, she shacked up with Martell, a local handyman with a young daughter of his own. Family photos paint a picture of domestic bliss: Lilly with her favorite pink blanket, Jack grinning toothily at the camera. But beneath the smiles, tensions simmered. Sullivan later told investigators he suspected foul play from the jump, even floating theories about abduction by a stranger or a vengeful ex.

The last confirmed sighting of the kids came the day before, May 1, at 2:25 p.m., captured on grainy surveillance footage from a Dollarama in New Glasgow. There they were, trailing Brooks-Murray and Martell through the aisles, picking out snacks with their baby sister in tow. Brooks-Murray later told police she put the kids to bed around 9 or 10 p.m. that night – accounts that shifted slightly under questioning, raising early eyebrows. Martell, who stayed up later, claimed he crashed exhausted around midnight, oblivious to any commotion.

When dawn broke and the kids were nowhere to be found, the alarm bells rang loud. Brooks-Murray’s frantic report sparked an immediate response: ground teams, K-9 units, drones, and helicopters scoured the dense woods around the property. Volunteers poured in by the hundreds, combing steep ravines and murky ponds. A chilling radio chatter from that first day captured the urgency: responders zeroed in on a torn scrap of pink fabric snagged off the road – a piece of Lilly’s beloved blanket, according to Brooks-Murray. It was a heartbreaking breadcrumb, but it led nowhere.

Divers plunged into nearby bodies of water – three ponds on May 8, Lansdowne Lake the next day – but surfaced empty-handed. Ground searches on May 2 and 7 turned up zilch, and by May 7, officials grimly scaled back, noting the harsh reality: two small kids couldn’t survive long in the wild. A secondary sweep of the home and yard from May 17 to 19 yielded oddities – a stray sock in the woods, faint boot prints that might match Jack’s sneakers – but no smoking gun. Police seized toothbrushes for DNA, pored over phone records, and even tapped toll plaza cameras along possible escape routes to New Brunswick, where Sullivan lived.

Enter the polygraphs, those infamous truth-serum machines that measure heartbeats, sweat, and squirms. In missing kids cases like this, they’re not gospel – courts rarely admit them as evidence – but they’re a quick way to weed out suspects. On May 12, just 10 days after the vanishing, Brooks-Murray and Martell voluntarily strapped in at the RCMP’s Bible Hill detachment. Four questions each, details redacted for privacy: Did you harm the children? Do you know where they are? The results? Deemed “truthful” across the board. Martell, who pushed for the test himself, later boasted to media that he was “nervous as hell” but passed with flying colors. Brooks-Murray echoed the sentiment, saying it was her bid to clear the air and focus the hunt.

But here’s where the plot thickens – and the scrutiny explodes. Court docs unsealed in August revealed not one, but multiple rounds of testing. The couple sat for three more sessions in the ensuing weeks, each time clocking in as honest. Yet, a note from an unnamed investigator lingered like a storm cloud: “At this point, the disappearance is not believed to be criminal in nature.” Not believed? That phrasing screams wiggle room, and it’s ignited a firestorm.

Online forums and true-crime podcasts are buzzing with theories. Some point to the family’s fractured dynamics: Sullivan’s late-night call to Brooks-Murray on May 2, where he allegedly fessed up to picking up the kids without permission. Police grilled him on May 22, and he too passed a polygraph on June 12 – truthful, they said. His mom, Belynda Gray, and Martell’s mother, Janie MacKenzie, got the third degree too. MacKenzie’s June 10 test? Inconclusive – her “physiology wasn’t suitable,” whatever that means. Gray skipped the machine altogether.

Fast-forward to December, and the polygraph saga has new legs. Leaked whispers from anonymous sources – never mind the details – suggest re-analysis of the raw data. Experts in forensics circles are questioning the machines’ reliability in high-stress scenarios. Polygraphs, after all, aren’t foolproof; they’re about 70-90% accurate at best, prone to flubs from anxiety or savvy deception. Did Brooks-Murray’s shifting bedtime story trip a hidden wire? Martell’s insistence on the test – was it nerves or a calculated move? And what about that second pink blanket scrap, fished from the trash weeks later? Cops confirmed it belonged to Lilly, but its placement screams staging to skeptics.

The RCMP isn’t spilling much. They’ve interviewed 54 folks, chased 488 tips, and logged hundreds of hours of surveillance footage from the area. No arrests, no bodies – just a yawning void. “This is an active, ongoing investigation,” a spokesperson stonewalled last month. But the lack of closure gnaws. Families like the Sullivans cling to fading hope: billboards with the kids’ faces dot highways, and a fridge magnet in Gray’s kitchen begs, “Where are Lilly and Jack?”

As winter bites into Nova Scotia’s forests, the questions pile up like snowdrifts. Was it a tragic accident – kids wandering off into the wild, lost forever? An abduction by a passerby on that isolated road? Or something uglier, buried in family grudges and half-truths the polygraphs couldn’t unearth? Brooks-Murray and Martell maintain their innocence, pleading for answers while raising their baby amid the glare. Sullivan, meanwhile, hammers away at his own leads, convinced his ex knows more.

In a case this raw, every detail dissects like a knife. The polygraphs were meant to illuminate; instead, they’ve cast longer shadows. Until Lilly and Jack surface – alive, or otherwise – the doubts will fester. Nova Scotia’s heartland, once a haven of quiet pines, now echoes with the unimaginable: What really happened to the Sullivan kids? The truth, whatever it is, lurks just out of reach – and it’s anyone’s guess when, or if, it’ll break free.